BAGHDAD: Islamic State fighters seized control of Iraq’s biggest dam, an oilfield and three more towns yesterday after inflicting their first major defeat on Kurdish forces since sweeping across much of northern Iraq in June.
Capture of the electricity-generating Mosul Dam, after an offensive of barely 24 hours, could give the Sunni militants the ability to flood major Iraqi cities or withhold water from farms, raising the stakes in their bid to topple Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s Shia-led government. “The terrorist gangs of the Islamic State have taken control of Mosul Dam after the withdrawal of Kurdish forces without a fight,” said Iraqi
state television.
The swift withdrawal of Kurdish “peshmerga” troops was an apparent severe blow to one of the only forces in Iraq that until now had stood firm against the Sunni Islamist fighters who aim to redraw the borders of the Middle East.
The Islamic State, which sees Iraq’s majority Shias as apostates who deserve to be killed, also seized the Ain Zalah oilfield — adding to four others already under its control that provide funding for operations — and three towns.
Initially strong Kurdish resistance evaporated after the start of an offensive to take the town of Zumar. The Islamists then hoisted their black flags there, a ritual that has often preceded mass executions of their captured opponents and the imposition of an ideology even Al Qaeda finds excessive. The group, which has declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria to rule over all Muslims, poses the biggest challenge to the stability of OPEC member Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Yesterday, its members were also involved in fighting in a border town far away in Lebanon, a sign of its ambitions across the frontiers of the Middle East.
It controls cities in Iraq’s Tigris and Euphrates valleys north and west of Baghdad, and a swathe of Syria stretching from the Iraqi border in the east to Aleppo in the northwest.
Iraq’s Kurds, who rule themselves in a northern enclave guarded by the “peshmerga” units, had expanded areas under their control in recent weeks while avoiding direct confrontation with the Islamic State, even as Iraqi central government troops fled.
But the towns lost yesterday were in territory the Kurds had held for many years, undermining suggestions that the Islamic State’s advance has helped the Kurdish cause. Witnesses said Islamic State fighters were also trying to take control of the town of Rabia near the Syrian border and were engaged in clashes with Syrian Kurds who had crossed the frontier after Iraqi Kurds withdrew.
REUTERS
